While I haven't heard the HE-500 I can say that HE-400 sounds wonderful with it (I listen to loads of metal), and your O-combo will drive them. Any special metal bands you have in mind, I might be able to comment further?

That's kind of a weird question on Head-Fi, isn't it? :] 99% of us here want things we don't need.

That being said, I'm likely to sell whichever I don't like. E17 for portable use, and then either the MKIII or the M&M for home use. Not many people replied to me on here about how it performs with the MKIII so I'm not sure if that's a "nice set-up" or not!

Lamb of God sounds great, I wasn't familiar with the other ones but I tried some John 5 and Darkwater, especially Darkwater sounded amazing! Thanks for giving me a new band to listen to One of HE-400's great strenghts with metal is how good drums sound on them in my opinion.

These cans are not that picky with the source either it would seem, I use a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic Plus, but I've had them with an Audioengine D1 and that worked well too. If you have the ODAC+O2 combo I'm sure you're fine with those!

[/quote]These cans are not that picky with the source either it would seem, I use a Cambridge Audio Dacmagic Plus, but I've had them with an Audioengine D1 and that worked well too. If you have the ODAC+O2 combo I'm sure you're fine with those![/quote]

Yup. And, I even cleaned them up with some packing tape before I took the pictures. The lint, for the most part, came about during the installation of the head band. The cotton batting, is like a nice cotton layer blanket. However, it does shed a bit until you get the material fully contained within the leather. I'm just glad I don't have a dog in the house.

Everyone should spot healing brush their earpads in photoshop before uploading headphone pics. It is what I do, because for some reason the camera always picks up the tiniest things, even after they appear perfectly clean after you take some tape to them.

BTW, what's with the uber-high resale prices on the HE-400 in the F/S forum? I'm posting here, because I don't want to thread crap in a person's thread about their pricing. However, $375 - $380 for a used pair is really nuts. I do realize shipping is included in those prices, but still ... The warranty doesn't transfer to a 2nd owner, so if the 2nd owner has troubles, then they will be out $75.00 - $85.00 to HifiMAN in order to get the headphones replaced. I say just spend the $20.00 extra and get a new pair and have the confidence of a warranty behind you for a year. Or, check out the returned HE-400s from headphone.com where they sell for about $339.00 and you still get the warranty.

i'm not selling my HE-400s. Never. However, if I were to ever sell them, I would say that $350.00 would be a more realistic price, with both types of pads included, as well as shipping costs.

OK, that's the last beef I'll have in 2012. That is, unless something gets under my crawl tomorrow, which is December 31st, 2012.

Everyone should spot healing brush their earpads in photoshop before uploading headphone pics. It is what I do, because for some reason the camera always picks up the tiniest things, even after they appear perfectly clean after you take some tape to them.

Heck, next time I'll just put the pleathers on before taking the pics. Problem solved.